


Crash Landing

by reliquiaen



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:17:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7251760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reliquiaen/pseuds/reliquiaen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It hit her harder than the Wunder had earlier landing on her shoulders." - Canon compliant maybe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crash Landing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Xairathan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xairathan/gifts).



Another explosion rocked the facility. Static crackled through the comms and for a second Mari lost connection with Asuka. The retreat through the crumbling corridors had been slow going, made worse by the drones whizzing along service tunnels and air ducts. They kept popping out of the fissures in the walls making nuisances of themselves. She swatted at another one, sparks fuzzing up her view for a moment before she set off again.

The map of the complex projected in one corner of her display had long since become irrelevant, the way the charges had been going off and blowing entire sections of the structure to kingdom come meant the map was wildly inaccurate. Case in point: ahead of her was a wall where a wide cargo bay should be. Her exit apparently had been buried.

“Four eyes?”

Asuka’s voice hashed, broken and sputtering in her ear. Clearly the debris was interfering with their lines.

“Yeah, princess?”

“Where are you? I’ve been outside for ten minutes.”

Mari laughed. “What’s this? You’re worried? About little old me? I’m touched.”

The static that echoed through next Mari could only interpret as a growl. “Keep going and I’ll touch my fist to your face. At speed.”

“Sure, princess. Just gonna make my own exit.” As she spoke, she tilted forward a little, lowering Unit.08’s shoulder and pointing it at the rubble blocking her route. “Where’s Misato at?”

A high pitched whine screeched through the comms and then Misato’s voice, distorted and garbled, replied, “About eight hundred metres on your right.”

The last word was cut off as Mari charged right through the wall of debris. A metal beam smacked her in the shoulder and through her off balance, but not enough that she didn’t make it through. Though Unit.08 did hit the dirt hard on the other side, scattering the little cars that had been stored in the bay. Although little was relative she supposed.

“Graceful,” Asuka deadpanned. “Get up. Those drones aren’t quitting.”

“They will.”

Mari punched her code into her control panel and the EMP she’d wired into the drone hub fired with another muffled bang. The angular machines buzzing towards them dropped in domino style, the ones closest to them didn’t quite reach the feet of Unit.02 as they skidded to a stop in the red sand.

“Huh,” Asuka sounded surprised. “Mine’s bigger.”

She must have entered the code into her console then because a second series of booms shook the ground beneath them. The first round had weakened the structure. This set sunk the entire facility, buried it beneath a mountain of Tokyo-3 ruins and the sand that had blown in from the desert to reclaim the spaces. They stood there for a long while watching as the last of NERV disappeared.

Eventually the shaking stopped and it struck Mari much harder than she’d expected it to: it was over. Done. As though with the realisation that stopping NERV was achieved and her purpose concluded, her shoulders sagged forward, fight slipping through her fingers like the sand in the cracks of the leftover sidewalks.

Asuka must have noticed, hard to miss the way a giant robot slumps over. But she (thankfully) didn’t get a chance to comment. The comms hissed back to life, no more static messing up their messages. Just in time too.

“Shikinami?”

The soft voice belonged to that little Ayanami type Asuka had brought home with her, like a stray cat or something. Mari didn’t get it, but she had been useful.

“I’m here,” Asuka replied, her voice weirdly quiet. “I’m fine.”

The sigh that stuttered through the lines was evident but Ayanami didn’t speak again.

Instead the sound that blared through Mari’s comms made her automatically lean sideways as if that would somehow make the sound less obnoxious. Asuka make a noise of complaint but Mari was too busy scrunching her nose up and twisting around in a vain attempt to make it stop. By the time she realised the origin of the sound, Asuka had already turned her Eva and set off at a sprint towards the _Wunder_.

Mari wasn’t far behind her.

Not far from them, the _Wunder_ was steadily sinking through the clouds, white wisps curling away from the hull as it dropped at a truly alarming rate.

“What’s happening, princess?” she called.

Asuka took a moment to respond. “It’s crashing.”

“I can see that. _Why_ is it crashing?”

“Hell if I know.”

They skidded to a stop beneath the _Wunder_ , great plumes of orange dust arcing up before their feet. Mari knew what Asuka was planning, it didn’t take a genius. She was going to catch it.

So Mari set her feet, extended Unit.08’s hands above her and readied her AT Field. Across from her, Asuka did the same, a shimmering hexagon of blues and greens distorting her shape.

Admittedly, in a desert was hardly the best place for the _Wunder_ to come down. And that horrible, grating blaring of sirens was decidedly not the nicest soundtrack for it. Mari looked away from Asuka and focused on the bottom of the _Wunder_ , blotting out the sunlight and honestly the prospect of being crushed by it flitted across her mind briefly before she caught herself.

Metal slipped against Mari’s palms and she wrapped her fingers around whatever that was above her, a grate she thought. The weight that slammed into her shoulders was immense. No surprises there, really, but her feet skidded through the sand and she nearly dropped her end. The stern came down hard onto Asuka’s shoulders; she slid through the sand as well. The _Wunder_ groaned and creaked but slowed, barely.

When Mari stopped slipping through the dust she looked down to find the weight had already pushed her through the sand to her ankles. There lay the issue: they could get no purchase on the dunes.

“I thought this was all part of Tokyo-3?” Asuka snapped at no one in particular. “Where is all the concrete?”

As if her words were a cue, a loud metallic boom drifted dully across the sand. Unit.02 stopped sinking and Asuka’s laughter filled the comms.

“You found it I see,” Mari noted, nearly buried to her knees. “Where is it on my side?”

She shuffled one foot through the sand until it kicked something hard and ringing. Well, that was grand. The ground on her end wasn’t level by any stretch of the imagination. Mari could only do her best but it was mighty hard to settle the _Wunder’s_ weight across her arms when one leg was higher than the other.

Gravity was a bitch.

“Four eyes!” Asuka called. “We have to lower it.”

Above them, the _Wunder_ groaned. In their ears the alarms kept sounding. Mari sucked in a deep breath. “Ready?”

Asuka kicked at the sand around her ankles, freeing herself enough to get past as the ship came down. Unit.02’s head jerked in a passable nod and they brought the ship down off their shoulders, careful to leave themselves room to get out from underneath and not too fast lest the crew get hurt.

“Misato, shut that damn alarm off already,” Asuka complained. Nothing happened.

At length, the _Wunder_ touched sand. A little harder, perhaps, than either of them would’ve liked, but there’s not getting it all. It wobbled a little, rolling dangerously to one side, the wing bending under the weight, cracking but not breaking. Asuka and Mari scrambled out from under the hull as it settled into the sands.

“Mistao?” Mari called.

The alarms stuttered and at last cut off.

There was no response though. Not for another long minute.

“Asuka? Mari?” Sakura’s voice.

“What the bloody hell happened, Suzuhara?” Asuka demanded.

Something scuffled by the transmitter. “We don’t know. You set off the second set of detonations and the engine just… stopped.”

“Shinji?” Mari wondered absently even though it was unlikely.

“He’s still sedated. It wasn’t Ikari,” Sakura assured them.

“Where’s Misato?” was Asuka’s next question.

“The engine room.”

They paused only a moment longer before both leaping up the side of the _Wunder_ to clamber in the direction of the engine room. Asuka had her own reasons, no doubt, but Mari knew what was in the engine room. Or – more importantly – what was in the engine itself.

While they could just as easily have taken the Evas back to their hangars, Asuka was clearly in a hurry. She merely ripped the side wall out of the side deck and ejected her plug out in that general direction. Classy. Though Mari did follow suit; it was the fastest way to get inside and the Evas wouldn’t be in any danger on the deck. Not now.

Ritsuko paced the length of the corridor outside the engine room barking orders at her underlings, scurrying about as if there was something they could do now that the ship was non-functional. The little Ayanami was standing by one doorway trying to hunch into herself enough that she became invisible. She perked up when she saw Asuka though, stepping lightly through the throng of people to stop at her side. They exchanged some wordless communication but Mari didn’t care to stay longer, she shoved between the mechanics and barged into the room despite Ritsuko’s hollered ‘she doesn’t want anyone in there, Makinami’.

Mari didn’t give a shit what Misato wanted.

Unit.01 stood still in its restraints on one wall of the room, looming over everything else. With one major difference: its core now sat dark and silent. There was no humming sound thrumming through the walls and floor anymore. The engine had well and truly quit.

“Makinami,” Misato snapped. “Get back.”

Mari took two steps forward anyway. “She’s not dangerous,” she muttered. “What happened?”

Misato gave her a strange look but didn’t speak. Not for a long drawn out minute, during which the only sound was a steady dripping. _Plink, plink, plink_ onto the steel floor. Probably damage from the fall.

“It just… stopped.”

Mari nodded, taking another step, two, three steps towards the chest plate of Unit.01. Her feet squelched in something on the floor.

Wait.

Dripping?

She looked down. Yes, there was a liquid pooling in the grooves of the steel plates. Her eyes trailed it; following back up, up, up to the source. It was oozing out past the core, sliding down the glassy surface, dripping off the chest plate. A steady stream of it. Even as Mari watched it went from a calm drip to a more pronounced rivulet.

Then she took a step back. Her right arm caught Misato on the hip and prompted her back a step too.

Misato opened her mouth but the sharp crack produced by the core as a thin line spider-webbed across its surface had her clicking her teeth shut. That time, it was Misato grabbing her elbow and dragging her towards the door, shouting for everyone to get clear. Asuka’s high voice demanded a _why_ but most everyone else heard the tight worry in Misato’s tone and quick stepped back down the corridor.

They made it to the end of the hall before another, louder, cracking sound issue from the room. This one accompanied by a flash of flickering red light. The only thing stopping Mari from darting back down the corridor was Mistao’s hand still clamped tightly about her arm just below the elbow.

It was a young mechanic, a man barely old enough to be termed such, his hat too big for his head, coat sleeves baggy, that tiptoed down to the engine room door and peeked around the edge. His face lit up as he backed up a pace or five in a single split second. That was all the confirmation Mari needed and she wrenched free of Misato to bolt to the doorframe. She paused, one hand on the doorframe, to stare through the now dark space at where the core had been.

There was a hole in Unit.01’s chest now, a few thin streams of LCL trickled off the edge but no longer did the core fill the space. It wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Instead, curled up on the floor buck naked, was a young woman. Though, admittedly, she probably could hardly be considered _young_ anymore.

Mari snatched a worker’s jumpsuit from the hook by the door as she ducked across the space. Misato not far behind her, though arguably a lot more stunned by this development.

Slowly, Mari sank to the floor beside her, draping the jumpsuit across her shoulders. Only then did she so much as twitch, the only indication she was even alive.

“Yui?” Mari asked gently.

She turned her face, but her eyes were glazed, looking through Mari rather than at her, as if she’d gotten so used to seeing the world in her mind that her eyes refused to work the way they should. Her fingers, cold and stiff, found Mari’s arm, squeezing through the plugsuit. “Where’s Shinji?”

“Downstairs in the infirmary,” Misato replied brusquely. “How do you know his name?”

“Gendo?”

“Taken care of,” Misato continued.

Yui nodded almost imperceptibly, her shoulders sagging slightly. Mari wanted so much and had no control of her faculties to do any of it. She wanted to hug her. She wanted to know why after all this time she felt so… empty.

“Did you…” Misato began, “come from out of the core?”

“Yes,” was Yui’s simple reply.

The natural follow up question, perhaps surprisingly, came from the Ayanami. “What about Rei?”

Mari and Asuka’s responses to that were nearly identical: shocked looks at the clone. Yui, however, merely seemed confused. “Rei?”

“She was… like me,” Ayanami explained.

Something flashed behind Yui’s eyes, a recollection perhaps. “Oh. Yes… She’s…”

 _Gone_. The word hung in the air but remained unspoken. Something Mari didn’t understand changed in Ayanami’s expression. She held her peace, however.

“Makinami,” Misato sighed, already stepping for the door. “Take her to infirmary. Everyone else report to your stations; we have quite a mess to clean up.”

Yui’s brow creased just slightly but Mari missed it. She was too busy watching the others file out and wondering how to get Yui downstairs if she was having trouble seeing. And she seemed so… disoriented. Though that was perfectly reasonable given what had transpired. It had been over thirty years; Mari’s nose wrinkled at the thought.

Once the last of the curious staff had filed out, she turned her gaze back to Yui, about to request she get dressed. It was hardly decent for her to be walking the corridors in the nude. Mari tried not to think about that.

When she met Yui’s gaze though, the other woman was actually _seeing_ her. Eyes clear and focused and full of amazement.

“Mari?”

Truly, Mari hadn’t known how anxious she was, how tightly wound and worried, until it all whooshed out of her with a sigh. Thirty years of pent up stress all gone.

“Yeah, Yui. It’s me.”

“Mari Makinami?” Yui’s hand came up as if the only way to prove to herself she wasn’t imagining this was to touch her and find out. Mari completely understood the sentiment. “You… You’ve barely aged.”

Mari offered her a crooked smile but it didn’t last. “Just lucky, I guess,” she tried, but her words fell flat too. “You’re looking pretty good for a fifty-three year old, you know.”

Yui’s frown deepened. “Excuse you? Fifty-three?”

“It’s twenty-thirty, Yui.”

“Really?” She made a thoughtful noise. “Time moves strangely in there.”

“Don’t let Misato know you were aware in the core,” Mari requested, going for a teasing tone. “She might cut you open for science.”

Obviously her poor attempt at a joke didn’t quite go over well but Yui did smile. Just a little bit. “I can’t believe you’re still here,” Yui sighed.

“Where else would I be?”

“I thought you went to England to start over. Figured you’d have a life to live.”

Mari huffed. “Yeah well…” She didn’t have anything to say to that. Not really.

“Mari?”

“Mm?”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

She felt her whole face go warm in that way she never truly conquered. “Thanks. It’s nice to have you back. Um… I mean like… in the world. Like… not in a core… hm.”

That time, Yui’s smile was honest and marginally wider. So Mari smiled back. For all the stress they’d been through, the way her heart clenched then was probably more painful than all the adrenaline rushes combined.

“Come on, Yui,” Mari exhaled at last, pushing herself into a standing position. “How about you get dressed and we’ll go find someone to give you a health check or something?”

“You want me to wear this thing?” she asked, indicating the jumpsuit still wrapped around her shoulders.

“Just for now.”

“Alright, Makinami. But I want my lab coat back as soon as possible.” With that she stood, no warning was given at all. Mari didn’t think she’d ever done a heel turn faster in her life. Yui, curse her, laughed. “So where’s Kyoko?”

Mari felt her spine go stiff and she knew that was really all the answer Yui needed.

“Oh.”

“Did you see that red-head in here before? The one with the girl who asked about Rei?”

“What about her?”

“She’s Kyoko’s daughter. Asuka.”

“Huh. Nice girl?”

Mari sighed again. “She’s _incredibly_ abrasive, actually.”

“So she’s just like Kyoko then,” Yui laughed. Honestly, hearing Yui laugh _finally_ after all those years was quite possibly the highlight of Mari’s day.

Then Yui touched her elbow and she turned to see her wearing that stupid grey jumpsuit wearing a soft smile and it all slugged Mari in the stomach at mach speed. It hit her harder than the _Wunder_ had earlier landing on her shoulders. A crash landing, knocking her off balance and sending her reeling. Yui was alive. She was _here_ ; standing right in front of Mari’s dumb face. With that realisation came a sudden onslaught of emotion that caught her entirely off-guard.

Rather than surrender to possibly crying in front of Yui, Mari threw her arms around her neck and hugged her for all she was worth. Which was no insubstantial sum, it should be noted. It took a beat longer than Mari would’ve liked before Yui let her hands settle on the small of her back.

“I’m _really_ glad you’re alive, Yui,” she mumbled, tucking her nose into the rough collar of the jumpsuit. Her fingers tightened in the fabric, as much as she could let herself anyway. They stood there for probably longer than they ought to. Given how cool Yui’s fingers had been before, she was rather warm now. And she hugged Mari with such fierceness.

“Mari? I’m so glad it was you here,” she whispered.

“Yeah well…” she sniffed, refusing to let herself cry now, and backed off a step. Yui’s hand slid away with agonisingly slowness. “I’ll take you to Shinji later. Sakura will want to make sure you’re okay first.”

“Who’s that?”

“Medical staff. She’s nice, you’ll like her.”

Yui paused a moment as if thinking about something very hard. “Would she mind sharing her space, do you think?”

At that, Mari did laugh. Properly and everything. “I doubt it.”

“Hey Mari?” Yui stepped past her out the door but lingered closer than she needed to. “Would you mind sharing your space?”

Typically, Mari’s face went red _again_. She’d have to work on that, definitely. “Um…”

“Misato just doesn’t seem like the sort of person to bother about things like sleeping quarters,” Yui expanded breezily. But the way she smiled had Mari thinking maybe she’d just like the company.

“No okay, that’s fine, whatever you want, I guess. I mean almost everyone doubles up on bunk space so that’s cool, yeah okay.”

She probably would’ve continued to ramble had Yui not hooked their arms together and motioned for her to start walking. It took them a little longer to get to the med bay than perhaps it should’ve. But that was just because Mari kept stealing glances at Yui.

It’d no doubt take a while to get used to her being back.

But it was _such_ a good feeling.


End file.
